Japanese Entertainment

Music video for It’s Our Time by Japanese pop duo moumoon, released in June 2015. Found this song after blogging them a couple of months ago.

The MV was shot in Paris when the band held their first solo concert (which was sold out) in the French capital in May 2015. The song is OK, but the video looks like a beautiful travelogue… feels like visiting Europe again after watching this.

By the way, half of the group name moumoon comes from French. “Mou” means soft in French, hence their name can be interpreted as soft moon in English =)

Japanese MV for Hello, Shooting Star by pop duo moumoon, released in February 2015. It’s an ending song for popular anime series Assassination Classroom.

I was a fan of moumoon’s Sunshine Girl in 2010. Haven’t heard much from the band since then, but they are probably doing well in their home country. Many Japanese commercials, movies and TV shows have used their songs over the years.

Japanese model Moe Oshikiri is the cover girl for the last issue (December 2016) of AneCan Magazine. The fashion magazine will suspend its publication after running for a decade because of business reasons. Poor sales, to put it boldly.

Oshikiri was also the cover girl for the first issue of AneCan in 2007. So it’s fitting that she’s the one who brings down the curtain on the magazine.

AneCan targeted women in mid to late twenties who have “graduated” from reading CanCam, its sister magazine for younger women and college students.

The challenge

CanCam is still running after 35 years though (first published in November 1981.) It’s an amazing feat but the future looks grim for fashion magazines worldwide, with the shift of interest and competition from internet publications etc.

To survive, the magazines have to build a strong branding with solid online presence and to venture globally. The later is something the Japanese media have fallen behind in the past decade, it’s so difficult for non-Japanese to reach their contents.